I'm a fan of Kennedy's policies, but if I might take just a moment for some real talk related to some claims he made in April 2023 when he announced his campaign.
1. Caring for autistic people is going to cost $1T by 2040. I found a paper on pubmed on this, but it has since been retracted. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37273157/
2. Sweden didn't close businesses during covif and fared better than everyone else in the world. Seems like a mixed bag at best. Here's a study published in Nature saying there would have been fewer deaths had they implemented a mandatory lockdown. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-45934-2
The committee that the politicians convened to review their decisions agreed with their decisions in general, but even they also concluded the government should have taken more action up front.
3. The CDC didn't follow its own pandemic guidelines. I can't find anything to back this up apart from an OPINION piece in the WSJ a month before Kennedy's announcement. It's paywalled, so I can't really dig in to this claim. If it were true, I'd expect to find lots of articles talking about this... pretty suspect if you ask me. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-pandemic-cdc-follow-science-guidelines-lockdown-mask-distance-16257e38
So if I like this candidate, why point out things that seem to be bullshit? Doesn't that give ammo to his opponents?
First of all, because it's the right thing to do. Whether you like someone or not, it's okay to call them out when they are wrong. I'd go as far to say it's good, and that it's part of a healthy debate and discourse.
As for giving his opponents ammo, they already have plenty. They can just say he was a drug addict and some people will write him off. They can say he spreads misinformation despite that he was talking about a paper published on NIH's site (and leave out the fact that it was retracted after he made the comments).
I really hope he is in the presidential debates. He'll have to answer for the things he actually said and have an opportunity to refute the made up stuff. And if they focus on policies that actually affect everyday Americans... 🔥🍿